


Cold Contagious

by the_genderman



Series: Maybe This Time We'll Get It Right [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a less Angsty Ending, Break Up, Lovers to Enemies to Friends, M/M, Make Up?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 14:06:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12037473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_genderman/pseuds/the_genderman
Summary: Songfic? Kinda. Bush's "Cold Contagious" came on my iPod a couple weeks or so ago and my brain said "Angstfic." And I was feeling really angsty yesterday, so I did this.





	Cold Contagious

Steve wasn’t even sure what started this latest fight. They all ended the same anymore; he’d shut himself in his room and take out his anger on a canvas and Bucky would slam the front door, disappearing somewhere into the city and purposefully leaving his phone at home. No contact, return uncertain. He almost didn’t mind.

The canvas was dark maroon and indigo today, painted on thick and blotchy with a bath sponge. Storm clouds low and oppressive over the city, split by garish streaks of pale lime green. The green slashes started thin and precise, quickly dissipating into muddy smears as the wet background absorbed them. The worst of his anger abated, Steve stepped back and looked at what he had done. He considered it for a few moments before getting his paint-caked ruler, one of the old solid wood kinds with the metal lip. He lay paper towels under the bottom of the canvas and began scraping the surface flat again. He didn’t much care for wasting paint, but it was better than wasting an entire canvas every time they fought.

Ever since Bucky had come back from Wakanda he had been different. Of course he was different; it had been over seventy years since they had last tried to live with each other. They’d both changed; in apparently incompatible ways, they were discovering. Steve hadn’t expected Bucky to be the same man he was before he’d joined the Army. Correction, had been _drafted_ into the Army. They’d had a fight three months ago where that had come up. Everything was ammunition now, from the variety of orange juice in the fridge to their different paths of reentry into the world and frequency of nightmares. In the beginning, Steve had offered to set Bucky up with an actual psychiatrist, someone vetted and validated by Hill or Fury. After the shoe-flinging incident, Steve had stopped pushing. When Bucky was ready, he knew where to find Steve. 

Steve at least tried to keep that constant. He kept to his schedule. He’d wake up promptly at 5:15 am, have a quick breakfast, and go meet Sam for his morning run. After that, he’d return home for a shower and second breakfast with (or without) Bucky. Then it was time to get to work. He had a desk job these days. A bit boring, but it was safe, and it helped keep his friends safe, too. It was slow business amending (read: entirely re-writing) the Sokovia Accords, but someone had to do it. Return home from work to ask Bucky how his day had been. Assuming Bucky was there when he got home. The past week had been a lot of single servings and individually-wrapped leftovers going straight into the freezer. (Most of the leftovers were still there.) Evenings were spent out with friends or at home in front of the TV or in front of a canvas. 

Steve sighed at the canvas and its dark blur. It would take a lot of gesso to cover this up and get it ready for the next fight. Cynical of him, but true enough. He carefully cleaned the paint-globs off the bottom of the canvas and balled up the paper towels. He’d let it dry and repaint it, rendering the surface blank white again, ready for angry brushstrokes and bitter colors. If this was anything like the last few fights, he’d have plenty of time to prepare it. Three days. That’s how long Bucky had been incommunicado last time. At the beginning of the fourth day he’d climbed back in the window over the fire escape and wordlessly tossed a bag of bagels at Steve where he had been sitting on the couch. Equally wordlessly, Steve had collected the bagels and walked them into the kitchen. 

Of course. It had been the bagels that had started it. Steve had bought the wrong variety of cream cheese. Bucky had grumbled that it felt like Steve didn’t even know him anymore; he liked chive cream cheese, not walnut. “You can’t put lox on walnut cream cheese, _duh_.” So of course Steve had responded without thinking about his words. “Well, maybe if you were ever actually _around_ , we’d’ve been able to catch up on our lost time and I might know this. You never liked lox before.”

Something so small, so insignificant in the grand scheme of things as a food preference they hadn’t discussed. That was what had sent Bucky storming off this time. Steve hadn’t phrased it very kindly, but it was true. Bucky was so rarely around anymore. Even in the early days, when he _had_ been home, he’d been withdrawn and antisocial. Steve felt that little spark of pettiness rising up inside him. Two could play that game. He tucked his easel safely into the corner where the canvas could dry and pulled a suitcase out of his closet, a gift from someone for some reason. Too large and ungainly, when he could roll up a few shirts and pairs of pants into a duffel and call it a day. He selected about two weeks’ worth of clothes and toiletries and zipped them into the suitcase, the zipper stiff and crisp in its disuse. He thought for a moment, then reopened the case and added three sketchbooks and a case of pencils and conté crayons. He packed his laptop bag with all the essentials, sat down on the corner of his bed for some last-minute browsing, and booked a hotel room. In Bangor. He had some vacation days to burn and Maine was supposed to be pretty this time of year.

He took the time to email work and leave a neatly printed note on the kitchen table for Bucky, but other than that, he barely glanced back as he headed out the door. It was a long drive to Bangor.

\--------------------------

Steve nearly dropped his sketchbook into the river when his phone rang, startling him. Five days in, and no one had had any need to call him yet. A few check-in work emails, but no calls. He closed the sketchbook and tucked his conté crayons safely away before fishing his phone out and thumbing ‘answer.’ As soon as he heard the voice on the other end he was struck by the uncharitable, if not entirely untrue, thought that he probably should have just let it go to voicemail.

“Where are you?” Bucky asked bluntly.

“What, not even a ‘hello, Steve’?” Steve replied in kind. “Did you run out of leftovers already?”

“Ha fucking ha. I know how to cook, Steve. Seriously, where are you? I get home, the place is dark and there’s a little note on the table that says ‘Gone fishing. –Steve’. Fishing? You? You ain’t got the patience for fishing. So what are you really doing and where are you doing it?” Bucky asked, irritation dripping from his voice.

(Steve thought he might possibly have detected a hint of nervousness under Bucky’s brashness, but maybe that was his inner optimist. His inner optimist had been given far too free of a rein in recent memory.)

“Oh, so you’re the only one who’s allowed to disappear for days on end?” Steve threw back at him. “I want some time to myself and suddenly you’re playing like I’m the bad guy for leaving you alone?”

“I always came back,” Bucky argued, sounding like he wasn’t quite convinced by his own argument.

“Yeah, and I’ll come back, too. Eventually. Right now I need some time, and you need to not lecture me on disappearing,” Steve snapped. “Even when you were around, you were never around. And no, just being present doesn’t count. When’s the last time we actually sat down and talked about _anything_ that didn’t end up in a fight, huh? Answer me that.”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“Don’t remember? Well, I do. It was two months after you got home from Wakanda. You’d had another nightmare. They could get the trigger words out, but they couldn’t erase the memories. You asked me why did I bother looking for you all that time? Why did I keep fighting for you after you were exposed?” Steve asked rhetorically, not stopping to let Bucky answer. “I told you it was because I was trying to save you. Well, it’s true, I was trying to save you. I was trying to pull you out of the water like you had done for me. I didn’t know it then, but I was too late. You had already drowned. So I took your body home and tried to pretend that I didn’t notice the smell.”

“Did you seriously just compare me to a fucking corpse?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Steve said, his words deliberately pointed and barbed. “You’re cold, you barely respond to me unless we’re fighting, and you’re not you anymore. Bucky Barnes died on that mountain in Austria.”

“Maybe he did,” Bucky spat back. “And maybe it’s a good thing that he did, because he wouldn’t like what _you_ ’ve turned into. Steve Rogers always saw the best in everyone and made sure they knew it. You’re a jaded old cynic who he’d never recognize in a million years.”

“Yeah, well you wanna know how jaded old cynics get made? Because they keep trying to see the good in the world, trying to be the good in the world, and day by day, little by little, the world wears them down until they’ve got nothing left to give. And if you want me to leave you alone, fine. I’ll leave you alone. When I come back, I’ll get a little apartment all to myself. Don’t worry, I’ll keep up the payments on ‘our’ home, I won’t let you get evicted, I’m not cruel. Don’t want to talk to me? Don’t want me around? Done and done. I just hope you got what you wanted.”

Steve hung up the phone and shoved it roughly back into his pocket without bothering to hear Bucky’s response. He didn’t _really_ want to move out, but he was just so tired of always having to be the one to make the first move. And if he had to move out and move on, then he would. He’d learn to live with it. His hand was shaking a little as he picked his sketchbook back up. He had to stop and just focus on his breathing, to calm down so that he wouldn’t snap the conté crayon between his fingers, as thin and fragile as a twig in the storm of his anger.

\--------------------------

True to his word, when Steve returned to Brooklyn, he started apartment-hunting. When he got the last of his boxes (he didn’t really have a lot of his own things, which at least made packing easier) loaded into the moving van, he glanced over his shoulder and told Bucky “You’ve got my phone number.” Bucky gave him an unreadable look and watched him go.

\------------------------

One month after moving out. Did he miss Bucky? Of course he did, but sometime Steve wondered if he actually missed the man he had been living with or if he just missed the memory of him.

\------------------------

Three months after moving out Steve got a text. Three words: “I miss you.” Then three more words: “I started therapy.” He couldn’t help but smile a little at that. He responded with a thumbs up emoji. 

\---------------------------

Five months after moving out and another text. “Therapy is haaaard. Why do feelings exist?”

\-------------------------

Seven months after moving out. An actual phone call this time, not just a text. Steve hesitated for a moment upon seeing the name on the screen, but he answered.

“Hey, Steve.” Bucky’s voice was quiet, simultaneously both more and less confident than when Steve heard it last.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve answered cautiously.

“So, uh, I just wanted to call and say I’m sorry. For a lot of stuff. I know we both said some things we probably shouldn’t’ve said, but anything you said, and I know it was because I kept pushing you and pushing you until you couldn’t take it any longer and pushed back. And then I got mad when you pushed back even though I was the one who started all the pushing. And I’m sorry for that.”

“Well, I guess everything has to start somewhere,” Steve said slowly. “I acknowledge your apology. I don’t know if I’m ready to accept it yet. You hurt me pretty deeply and that’s gonna take some time to heal, but it’s a start.”

“I was hoping we might be able to be friends again?” Bucky asked, the final syllable curving softly upwards.

“Yeah, I think I’d like to try again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: I'm tired. Somehow I typed "Switzerland" instead of "Austria" initially. Fixed.


End file.
